Sunday, October 14, 2007

A reign of terror which history has chosen to neglect

Right now, there is a conflict brewing. Kurdish rebels in southern Iraq have been attacking Turkish troops. There is a large Kurdish population in Turkey, some of whom have long wanted their own autonomous state. Turkey has been mobilizing potential aerial strikes against the Kurds based in Iraq. This obviously causes a big problem that the United States would wish to avoid.

I haven't mentioned that there also is a pending resolution in front of the House condemning the mass killings of Armenians by the Turkish during World War I as an act of genocide. Turkey has already withdrawn their ambassador to the U.S. in protest of this, and have threatened the U.S. military with stripping them of access to their military bases.

So it's quite a heavy issue. Upon reading Robert Fisk's column on the Turks' persecution of the Armenians, I couldn't say I knew very much about it. I still don't know much about it, as this is a short article. But Fisk tells us enough and gives us enough evidence to at least provide us a glimpse of what exactly happened, and I really didn't have an idea. I was stunned at the similarities between this and the holocaust against the Jews by the Nazis. The only thing different, apparently, is the attention given to each one.

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